God bonked me on the head with this passage from Ezekiel 3 today –

“Look, I’m not sending you to a people who speak a hard-to-learn language with words you can hardly pronounce. Don’t be afraid of them, even though they’re a bunch of rebels. Get all these words that I’m giving you inside you. Listen to them obediently. Make them your own. And now go. Go to the exiles, your people, and speak. Tell them, ‘This is the Message of God, the Master.’ Speak your piece, whether they listen or not.”

I went bitterly and angrily. I didn’t want to go. But God had me in his grip.

“Whenever you hear me say something, warn them for me. If I say to the wicked, ‘You are going to die,’ and you don’t sound the alarm warning them that it’s a matter of life or death, they will die and it will be your fault. I’ll hold you responsible. But if you warn the wicked and they keep right on sinning anyway, they’ll most certainly die for their sin, but you won’t die. You’ll have saved your life.

“And if the righteous turn back from living righteously and take up with evil when I step in and put them in a hard place, they’ll die. If you haven’t warned them, they’ll die because of their sins, and none of the right things they’ve done will count for anything—and I’ll hold you responsible. But if you warn these righteous people not to sin and they listen to you, they’ll live because they took the warning—and again, you’ll have saved your life.”

Some standout revelation –

• God doesn’t send everyone to “into all the world” to make disciples: some of us need to stay right where we are, in our own neighborhood.
• First things first: get His words inside of you, make them your own. Live it, then speak it.
• I relate to this Ezekiel guy – God’s command made me bitter and angry, too!
• We have a staggering responsibility to save the lost and encourage the saved. God holds me personally responsible for carrying the Good News to my neighbors.
• We’re not responsible for our neighbors’ response to God’s word, but for ours. When He gives us a command, we must obey. That “love your neighbor” thing? It’s not going away.
• God asked Ezekiel to do weird things, like lay on his side for 390 days while tied up with ropes, eat strange foods, and cut off all his hair. Thank God, we don’t have to be weird! All we have to be is kind. Easy peasy!